Prototype to an Improved Future Virtual Healthcare System
The emerging telehealth platform can globally disrupt traditional healthcare services
The current simplistic telehealth patient journey needs to evolve to a telehealth ecosystem.
To improve, the telehealth platform of tomorrow needs to manage more acute conditions; be scalable to handle very large volumes and optimize clinician workflow.
These solutions will employ not only advanced telehealth technology but also a new functionality design.
Background
The current telehealth system is a simplistic model of a patient journey, mainly focusing on a virtual consult. This currently includes:
Provide medical information and virtual visits
Regular telephone consults
Video conferencing
Online refills
Asynchronous collection and storage of at home data
The future growth of telehealth will need a platform which can:
Serve a million patients per month
Address large scale data from electronic health records and biosensors
Offer a variety of healthcare services to address the complete patient journey (education, wellness & prevention programs, etc).
Include telemedicine, teleconsulting, telerehabilitation, telepharmacy and telemonitoring
Secure record keeping and reporting
Health Insurance information
Review
To improve virtual healthcare systems, the major components should include:
Manage a broader number of patients with more acute and/or chronic conditions
Patient selection between digital and traditional channels of care
Scalability Management - evenly distribute high volumes workload for optimal clinical outcome and avoiding length waiting times.
Optimize Clinician Workflow – prioritization of work with distribution to available appropriate level
Unlike single step supply and demand matching (i.e. Uber ride hailing), the telehealth platform has multi-step supply and demand tiers tied to various risk factors and considerations.
Baseline Telehealth Functionality should include:
Alert notification
Healthcare education
Telemonitoring services:
Wearable devices, biological sensors, etc
Within or outside the healthcare facility
Automatically collected
Daily automated checklist
Provider notification of patients at risk
Patient notified to perform/collect health information
Patients Medical record
Schedule appointments
Request for telemedicine services by patient
User account management – health insurance, payments, etc
Capable of enormous data streaming
Collect all data
Capture abnormal values, analyze relevance, track over time
Notify provider & patient of findings to investigate further
Data Exchange – Summarized information regarding:
Patient treatment
Cost of Services
Reimbursement status
Cybersecurity
Patient & Provider Journey
Patient Logs into Telehealth Platform
Patient enters virtual waiting room
Automated App Dispatcher collects patient information and health condition
The AI determines if this is routine, normal, severe or critical
Finds best match of available healthcare provider based on patient needs
Routes patient to most appropriate provider (immediately available or with minimum wait time).
Provider Indicates within platform as “available now”
Can view patient list based on:
Severity
Registration time
Waiting time
Provider determines most suitable diagnostic & management
Visit provider or diagnostic workup closest to patient
Hospital visit
Requires ambulance
Outpatient management
Specialist consultation
CONCLUSIONS:
Telehealth platforms will need to establish a complete one-stop digital service.
The new system should optimize patients, hospitals, health professionals, payers to serve an unlimited number of patients simultaneously.
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